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Book Reviews / Pneuma 34 (2012) 95-159
Susan A. Maurer, The Spirit of Enthusiasm: A History of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, 1967-2000 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2010). 90 pp., $18.99, paper.
This little volume provides a quick introduction to an apparently anomalous phenomenon in American religion in the last half-century: the emergence of a charismatic movement within the Roman Catholic Church. It would seem unlikely that direct and personal mani- festations of such gifts of the Holy Spirit as speaking in tongues would find a welcome place in Catholicism, with its formal liturgies and often vivid sacramental dramas. And yet, begin- ning in the middle of the 1960s, a broad based and enduring charismatic movement took root. Identifying itself as “charismatic” in part to emphasize its distinction from established forms of Protestant pentecostalism, this movement was led and sustained largely by lay people, with encouragement from but without direct control by the Catholic clergy. As such, it is easy to characterize it as a particular expression of the spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), a meeting in Rome of bishops from around the world that transformed the theology and practices of Catholicism, defining the church as the “people of God” and giving new impetus to the religious and spiritual impulses of ordinary believers. A revised dissertation (one of several that have been done on this subject over the years), Maurer’s work will be useful to those who need to know something about the origins of the move- ment, even as the book’s gaps and omissions will suggest avenues for future study. Catholic charismatics’ “upper room” experience came at Duquesne University in Pitts- burgh during a weekend retreat for students in February 1967. Tongues may or may not have been manifested there, but they soon would be as the phenomenon spread first to other Catholic university campuses and then to parish churches around the country. Maurer tells this well-known story by relying on the previously published memoirs of some of the origi- nal participants, and she charts the response of church officials — at first “positive but cau- tionary” — in the United States and abroad. Cardinal Leo Suenens, a Belgian churchman with tremendous influence in the Vatican, proved the movement’s staunchest ally, and he helped ensure that Catholic charismatics would be careful always to tie themselves closely to established church structures. This last dimension was especially noteworthy. Rather than split off on their own, these Catholics managed to articulate a way to be both charis- matic, following wherever the Spirit might lead them, and loyally, obediently Catholic at the same time. What might thus have developed into a splinter movement became, in some places, a reliable source of unwavering support for traditional church structures, programs, and doctrine. Many Catholic charismatics simultaneously maintained an intense devotion to the Virgin Mary, for example, long a sore theological sticking point with non-Catholics: for such devotees, however, speaking in tongues was not incompatible with saying the rosary. The movement did become progressively ecumenical with time, as Catholic charis- matics forged links with Protestant pentecostals, but its participants never stopped thinking of themselves as fully orthodox Catholics.
The brevity of Maurer’s work is both a strength and a weakness. It provides a readily digestible summary for those who need to know only a little about all this. A book that offers a history of all of Christian spirituality from the time of Saint Paul to the present in two and a half pages (63-65) will obviously lack depth, but for some readers that will be an advantage. At the same time, important themes are suggested but not fully developed. Maurer correctly
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/157007412X621914
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Book Reviews / Pneuma 34 (2012) 95-159
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notes, for example, that the enthusiasts of this movement were for the most part well edu- cated, middle class, and predominantly white. The reader immediately responds: Tell me more. We need analysis, not attempted here, of the social history of this phenomenon. Why were some Catholics, only a generation or two removed from the immigrant experience and newly established in white collar jobs and the suburbs, attracted to it, while others in similar circumstances were not? What was the staying power of participants? Is this something that an individual Catholic might experiment with for a time and then abandon for other forms of religious expression? Indeed, how many people are we talking about? Numbers are understandably hard to come by or confirm, but we need to know how participation waxed and waned over time. This reviewer’s sense (completely unscientific) is that the movement peaked sometime in the 1980s and has diminished in size since: is that accurate, and if so why did this happen? All such questions have been addressed in a preliminary way by other studies, but even those need further elaboration. If this overview helps spark that additional study, it will have fulfilled its purpose and will be the more welcome for it.
Reviewed by James M. O’Toole
Clough Professor of History
Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts [email protected]
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